The context of this post is in our own workplace divisional Teams channel, a discussion recently started about platforms and principles surrounding blogging for the council. One of my comments to the thread, I got to the end of writing it and thought 'that should be a blog post!'
Going back to first principles, there was a question of ‘what do we mean by blogging?’
As I see it there are three categories of blogging:
- For an internal audience only (whether that's just a division within the council or for the wider council at large as being the audience), where eg a project team is sharing the periodic sprint notes on the project,
- For a public audience, but where a member of council staff is sharing - in their capacity of being a council member of staff, and their name and job title being attached to the post - something interesting they have been working on, where colleagues in other councils and keen members of the general public will have an interest in reading it, and
- Personal blogs (such as this one) where an individual who happens to work for an organisation shares their thoughts and insights about their work, for the benefit of interested outsiders who might be able to learn from it.
For the first two categories, I think they should be done on a common unified properly supported council-supplied platform.
Early in the discussion there was an implication that Blogs of Type 2 there should be restricted to our Elders and Betters in Corporate Communications; I disagree; the point of blogging is it’s not corporate, it’s personal and informal. Any single one of us should be encouraged to contribute to a council blog, writing in our own authentic voices, with copyediting done by content professionals only to ensure clarity and readability and correct spelling and basic standards of grammar.
For Blogs of Type 3, there are indeed many platforms available, some are better than others, and people will have their own personal preferences. What’s important is that people are working in the open and sharing, not whether they’re Wordpress advocates, Medium advocates, or Substack advocates.
Just to reiterate there in case you missed it - the opportunity to blog about one's work should be an opportunity open to everybody, and those with an interest should be encouraged in that. Blogging about one's work should not be seen as messing about on Facebook during work time, it should be seen as a core relevant aspect of the job for those capable of doing it.
We work in the open, we make everything better
Of course, not everybody feels they’re a natural communicator - so whilst blogging should be for everybody, people shouldn’t be made to think they have to blog. But I’m sure the people who are experienced at doing it within your organisation will be more than happy to give help and support to those who are nervous about giving it a go!